TV Review - Good Trouble (2019)

This is a spin-off of The Fosters, which ran for five seasons, from 2013 to 2018. The Fosters was a very progressive series about an interracial, lesbian couple in San Diego that adopts children in foster care. They have four foster children and one biological child. The series followed the children as they went through high school. This spin-off follows two of those foster children who are now adults, graduates from college, as they move to Los Angeles to begin their careers and independent lives.

It's not that far flung from Grown-ish, another spin-off series on the same TV network. Grown-ish follows one child as she breaks away from her family and goes to college. Yet, it's about her dating life and her interactions with a diverse group of friends in new and sometimes challenging social situations. That's essentially the premise of this series, except the focus isn't just on one girl building her own voice and position in life. The focus here is on two girls. Except, is it?

Maia Mitchell stars as Callie Adams Foster, the law student who recently graduated from the University of California, San Diego. She's been hired to clerk for a conservative judge who sits on a court in L.A. Yet, she's not a clerk who basically just does secretarial duties. She's been hired to help the judge form opinions through researching case law, essentially offering her own opinion. The judge has two other clerks in his office and Callie has to deal with the office politics, meaning that the other two seem more concerned with advancing their careers than doing the right thing.

Created by Joanna Johnson and Peter Paige & Bradley Bradewig, the show can provide an interesting look into judge's clerks and what goes on behind the scenes of a judge's process. The writers use a very topical case, a Black Lives Matter case, as the case in question for Callie in this first season. The first, five episodes haven't really delved too deeply into it. The rest of the season probably will, but the writers are instead taking it bit by bit. Yet, the show thus far has avoided much of the details of the case. Instead of understanding the case and debating the issues therein, it's more about the clashing personalities of the fellow clerks.

That drama would be more interesting if the show gave us more of the nitty-gritty of the case. For the first, five episodes, the only issue at play has nothing to do with the substance of the Black Lives Matter case. It has to do with Callie's possible conflict of interest. Callie lives above an old theater that has lofts on top of it. The lofts have communal living spaces like a shared bathroom and shower. A dozen or so people live in this communal space called the "Coterie." One person is a young woman connected to the case. Callie has somewhat befriended this young woman and because of which this creates a conflict of interest. Instead of disclosing this, Callie chooses to hide it because she doesn't want to be recused from the case, but it's a secret that forces unnecessary drama and rather uninteresting drama from a character that's supposed to be smarter.

The conflict of interest wouldn't even be an issue, if Callie didn't live in the Coterie. The first episode concerns whether or not she will live in this communal space. She doesn't want to live there given how shabby it is and given some awkward encounters with some of the other residents have been. Supposedly, she can't afford to live anywhere else, but we don't even see her try. She lives in this space because the show would rather her live there, not because it's a logical choice for her to live there.

The series would seem to want to be a version of Melrose Place or The L.A. Complex. At times, the show feels like it's an ensemble, prime-time soap opera that's about these various groups of people. In this case, it's mostly millennials. Unfortunately, the show can't help but be a show more centered around Callie who is the least interesting character of the diversity of characters introduced.

Cierra Ramirez co-stars as Mariana Adams Foster, the sister to Callie and the tech student who recently graduated from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She's hired to be a designer and/or coder at Speckulate, a start-up that's developing apps or software or something. It's never really clear what this company does. It's not as clear a tech company as the tech companies in shows like Silicon Valley or Looking. The reason Callie is living in the Coterie is because Mariana's co-worker lives there and she's hoping to hook up with him. In other episodes, it seems as if the show would explore Mariana's dating life. We do get her dealing with sexism and racism at her job, but the show's lacked any interest in Mariana's social life otherwise. She does point out cute guys but we never see her act on it. Hopefully, that will change in future episodes, but if the series takes five episodes before even going there with one of their leads, it doesn't bode well.

Tommy Martinez (Riverdale) plays Gael, the co-worker of Mariana, a graphic designer and her initial love interest. Instead of hooking up with Mariana, he hooks up with Callie. Callie realizes that Gael is bisexual. She expresses some mixed feelings about his bisexuality, which comes across as bi-phobic. Unfortunately, the show doesn't have a lot of interest of giving us Gael's point-of-view. The show is more about how Callie perceives him or is attracted to him for reasons that don't seem to go beyond his physical beauty. His relationship with a boy named Bryan, played by Michael Galante, seems like it's just a casual thing, but we don't even learn how the two met or much about their relationship beyond Callie's passive observations from afar. Gael seems to develop feelings for Callie, but we have no clue why or what he specifically sees in her. The show simply wants Callie to be in a love triangle with a bisexual guy. Delving into his character, or walking a mile in his shoes hasn't happened yet in the first, five episodes, which could change but so far the show has set up something so hollow.

This is the problem with the show. The show believes that it's all about Callie and that everything revolves around her. This is probably fine for fans of The Fosters because as that show went along, it basically became "The Callie Show." For me, I didn't appreciate that focus on Callie mainly because Callie was never the most interesting character on that show. Her character at times was actively annoying. This series doesn't do much to improve that.

Teri Polo and Sherri Saum who play Callie and Mariana's parents visit in Episode 5. They prove with just their brief appearance why the spin-off series should have focused solely on them. Obviously, Polo and Saum are better actors having more age and experience, but they just exude something that Mitchell doesn't. Mitchell is a lovely and strong actor, but she simply doesn't have the gravitas to anchor a series that's attempting to grapple with bigger ideas.

The other characters are interesting, but the show doesn't really spend enough time with them or give them enough fleshing out to make us care about them with any intensity. Sherry Cola (Claws and I Love Dick) is Alice, the manager of the Coterie. Zuri Adele plays Malika, the politival activist involved with the Black Lives Matter case. Emma Hunton plays Davia, the social media influencer who's having an affair with a married man named Jeff, played by Chris Sheffield. They all have potential. The show doesn't do much with that potential thus far.

Rated TV-14-DLS.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Tuesdays at 8PM on Freeform.